Romeo and Juliet
by Stephane Richer
Summary: Then I dreamed your dream for you; now your dream is real. How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?


Romeo and Juliet

Disclaimer: I don't own OHSHC or the song "Romeo and Juliet" by Dire Straits.

* * *

Tamaki waltzed down the street, thinking of how much he loved Haruhi. He couldn't believe he had been so dense as to not realize it before. _I love her! I'm in love!_ He couldn't help but sing it to the world. So what if everyone was eating dinner now? The night was a perfect time to sing sweet serenades. "I'm in love with a girl named Haruhi! She's just as perfect as she can be! Oh, I love her forever! Baby, let's stay together!"

Haruhi, out on her balcony for a breath of fresh air, rolled her eyes. "Oh, god, it's him," she muttered. "My boyfriend is so stupid." Then, as he approached, she called to him, "Hey, Tamaki! Don't do that; it disturbs the neighborhood!" _Not to mention it embarrasses the hell out of me._

"Anyway, what can you do about it from all the way up there?" he called back.

She rolled her eyes, but he just grinned back. Their relationship was so improbable and there were so many obstacles. But she'd just surrounded him, exploding like a bottle of warm seltzer and coating him in her presence. It reminded him a bit of an American movie, but…he'd think of it later. He sometimes wished that they'd have been in a freer time, when class wasn't so structured, but that was really circumstance anyway…

They were from opposite ends and situations. Her parents had been normal people, a lawyer and a high school dropout, when they'd met. But their relationship had seemed so scandalous because he didn't swing that way and she was so much older than he was. Yet it worked out for a few years. And she had been born. Then again, Tamaki's parents' story was right out of a soap opera, too. Yuzuru had the perfect Hollywood-esque life and the perfect wife. But then he'd met Anne-Sophie and everything changed. They took chances they really shouldn't have, and so Tamaki happened. But Tamaki and Haruhi had the same dream, to fulfill their mothers' wishes. It was a bit odd, that they'd ended up together and had that strange thing in common, but then again that was fate.

But he'd helped out with her dream. It was his father who had accepted her among the rich and powerful at Ouran, where she was one of a select few scholarship students. Her dream was so much closer, but the way she felt about it wasn't the way he wanted her to. He wanted her to feel happy and grateful, but she resented him and his father, the way they slightly wanted to control her. She was afraid her love was just gratitude. So she started acting cold and distant. He was just another person who she'd hopefully paid of her debt to.

The gilded gates of her dream were ahead of her, but there was Tamaki. He was a pretty stranger who'd rescued her from obscurity and eccentricity and welcomed her to the world of the Host Club. She shouldn't have listened to him, but those violet eyes were too hard not to answer to. They held promise and brightness. His smooth voice turned normal words into magical fantasies, his inner mind theater held some semblance of reality to her. She would like to do those things, she really would.

She promised him to always be with him. She said she'd be his forever; she said she'd be his friend, his more-than-friend. She promised him to work for him for what seemed to be forever, but then she left. She tried to forget. Every time she heard his name, her heart would pound and she'd blush, but she'd make some stupid excuse and pretend to be uninterested. She wondered what he was up to, but when people asked her what he was like she said she didn't know him very well, perhaps hoping for them not to tell her. Part of her was afraid that he'd be married to some rich bimbo who paid for her beautiful body.

And he remembered all those times she'd been unafraid to cry in front of him. She faked the apathy in front of others, but she let her barriers down around him. Haruhi was actually quite an emotional girl. During those thunderstorms, she'd clung to him and soaked his shirt and his chest, and he'd let her. He clung to her, realizing she wasn't usually this open and he'd have to savor the moment. And when they'd made love, she cried, too. She was so filled with passion and love, so caught up in the moment, and she tried not to. But she still cried her heart out.

Tamaki would soothe her with sweet assurances. "I love you like the stars above. I love you as long as those stars are far from here. I love you forever. Haruhi, no one will ever mean this much to me. My love, you are an angel." He wondered whether she heard.

And then he did remember the American movie about the gang war, about the star-crossed lovers who knew their circumstance was all wrong and prayed for peace. But did she realize it?

And now, he couldn't charm his way through anymore. Every time he tried to play piano, it sounded halfhearted and stupid. It wasn't the way it was meant to because he wasn't complete any more. He missed her and her love, the way they made him so much better, so much higher, he missed her so much. And now what was he? He was his father's gofer, a boring person in a boring, useless job. He was nothing without her and he knew it. He wrote her flowery love letters, but burned them all because they sounded so stupid.

He stayed up half the night crying for her, crying the way she used to. Every time he saw lightning flash, he got scared that she wasn't in a safe place. It was instinct. It took all the willpower he had not to go and find her. He wished he'd had more time to help her with her fear. For all he knew, she could have conquered it by now.

Years after they ended, he strolled past her apartment on a cool spring night. The cherry blossoms blew in the wind over an empty lot where the building used to be. "Haruhi!" he called, though he knew it would be fruitless.


End file.
